Darby Edelen
Forum Replies Created
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[Dave LaRonde] “Maybe there’s a way to access the horizontal & vertical dimensions of the individual layers.”
widthand height should do the trick for that.Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
The
wiggle()function returns a modified version of what it is supplied. What this means is that if you have a layer at [360, 240, 200] and apply an expression that readswiggle(1, 5)you will get results between [355, 235, 195] and [365, 245, 205].In your earlier example you were multiplying the results of
wiggle()directly. With our previous example and your expression you would get results between [355, 235, 975] and [365, 245, 1025], not only is that a difference of 50 on the Z-axis (5 * 5 should be a difference of 25) but it’s much much farther away on the Z-axis than it should be! What gives?What you want to do is multiply the offset that the
wiggle()is generating, not the result itself. In Dan’s expressionwiggle(3,thisComp.layer("null").effect("Slider Control")("Slider")) - value;gives you the difference between the layer’s ‘normal’ position and it’s wiggled position (in the example we’ve been using this would be values between [5,5,5] and [0,0,0]).You don’t want to use this offset directly in your result, instead you want to multiply the offset’s Z value by 5 (giving us [5,5,25]) and then add the original position back into this vector, again from Dan’s expression:
value + [w[0],w[1],w[2]*zMult]The other thing to note about Dan’s expression is that he only used
wiggle()once and assigned that value to a variable. This cleaner for the position property becausewiggle()will give you a vector in the form of [x,y,z] when applied to the position property. Callingwiggle()three times will give you 3 different [x,y,z] vectors (9 total values of which you’re only using 3) and take (theoretically) three times as long to compute.Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
What you mean to say is that you created all of your assets in Illustrator, right? You used AE to composite them?
If your client wants progressive footage then make sure you are rendering from AE as progressive in the Render Settings.
Other than that, are you doing anything else to your footage after it has been rendered from AE?
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Cache] “Am i doing it right to import the HD footage, and interpret it as D1/DV PAL 1.07 PAR in the project window?
This bothers me the most, as I dont want to end up with horizontally stretched footages in the end, as the Footage contains peoples, faces.”I’m not sure if these questions are specific to AE, but I’m going to assume that they are since this was posted in the AE forum:
Do not re-interpret the footage!
Your footage should be interpreted as what it is, this includes the native pixel aspect ratio of the footage. AE does not want to know what you want the footage to be, that’s handled later, it wants to know what the footage is.
Create your After Effects composition to have the desired output resolution and settings (PAL DV 720×576, 1.07 PAR, etc). This is what you want your footage to end up being.
Drag and drop your footage into this composition and use the Fit To Comp Width command (Command+Option+Shift+H for Mac, or Ctrl+Alt+Shift+H on PC). This will preserve your footage’s native aspect ratio and fit it to the composition.
The last step is to put a black solid behind your footage just to make the letterbox officially exist.
[Cache] “Should I turn on PAR correction display in order to see what the client will see on a TV connected to the DVD that contains the final material ?
If i do the last, the faces/people will grow fat, will stretch horizontally. right ?”
You should turn on PAR correction, this will show you what the footage will look like on a native (PAL in your case) display.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
This sounds like you have a camera in the composition but are doing your work in Front (or some other orthographic) view. AE will render from the camera view.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
Banding across gradients is a normal part of working in the digital realm due to a phenomenon known as quantization.
You might recall that in an 8bpc (8 bits per channel) PSD you have 256 levels in each of the color channels. If you have a gradient over a distance of 5 pixels with a beginning value of 10 and an end value of 14 you will have a unique value for each of the 5 pixels (10, 11, 12, 13, 14), but if that same gradient is spread across 50 pixels then you will see banding. The computer still only has 5 values to spread across 50 pixels so you will see a ‘line’ every 10 pixels where the value suddenly jumps a level.
There are a few ways to try and combat this, you could try creating a 16bpc or 32bpc (float) PSD. These options are accesible under the Image > Mode menu.
Alternatively, you could add some noise to the gradient to make the transitions between values less obvious.
I hope this answers your question, feel free to clarify if I’ve missed something.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
As a general rule in looking at programs I would recommend contacting the programs directly in addition to researching online, which it sounds you’re doing already… good job! =)
I can’t recommend any programs from personal experience, but I do know that the Academy of Art in San Francisco has many different programs covering a broad range of media.
My experience in the industry leads me to believe that an education is important in giving you an edge, but most employers will be looking for professional experience.
You might be better off if you can manage to develop skills in a starting position somewhere and supplement that with any courses that interest you… of course, in the end, it’s really up to you!
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
That looks like normal banding across a gradient. Do you not have a gradient in that PSD? Some more detailed information about what is going on in the screenshot might be helpful. Does it only occur with black? Are you using a working color profile?
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[mr_gfx] “In after effects i used HUE/SAT to make the clip black and white. but you see all the noise pixels when doing this.”
You shouldn’t use Hue/Saturation to desaturate footage. Instead try using either the Tint effect or the Channel Mixer effect.
If you’re at all familiar with the Channel Mixer in Photoshop then you should feel comfortable with this effect, if not then I’d recommend reading up on it some in the help files or online.
The Channel Mixer may also help you avoid some of the noise & grain. The Blue color channel is usually the noisiest, so you could make it contribute very little (or not at all) to your final B&W image.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA -
[Tore Gresdal] “There is 50 half res frames in one second. 25 of them are lower field, 25 of them are upper field. Why not display the two of them simultaneosly.”
An interlaced display device does not display all the fields simultaneously, that’s just the nature of an interlaced display.
Your question is kind of like asking, “why not fly to the moon in a shopping cart?” that’s just not the way shopping carts work.
The other important thing to realize is that if the footage was shot at 50i then there aren’t 25 frames per second, there are 50 unique fields per second. That is to say that the upper field and the lower field of a frame are not from the same moment in time, they are separated by 1/50th of a second.
If your source was shot progressively (film for example) then telecined to tape, it should be PsF (progressive split frame) meaning that both fields in a frame are from the same moment in time (the same frame of film) and it would possibly have a pulldown (which is a whole new can of worms that I invite you to look into). However, an interlaced display is still not displaying the 2 fields at the same time, that’s just not the way that they work.
Darby Edelen
DVD Menu Artist
Left Coast Digital
Aptos, CA